If you are like me, you like to engage the opposing faction in either combat, running for your life, claiming territory while you're there, or emote-flirting. There is an entire 'nuvva level added to the enjoyment of an MMO when you are in contested areas, and can expect to be spotted/attacked by red names.

I am aware that PvP servers and contested areas are going to be in WildStar, but I would really, really, really like to point out that if the questing and resource-gathering areas aren't shared, or actually contested,(Like SWTOR) then you may as well not have them at all.

Nothing is more boring to me than running around a contested zone, and never seeing an enemy. This can be easily avoided with neutral quest hubs, overlapping zones of particular mobs/quest items, and not being like SWTOR. I believe it takes something big away from players when you force them to actually try to run into eachother.(Like running for 20 minutes into an enemy's questing area that would otherwise be unknown to you if you hadn't looked up where the enemy faction has quests - whew!)

So yeah. It looks pretty promising so far, but I had to at least let it out or I would somehow feel responsible for the game failing, if it indeed happened to fail due to being like SWTOR.

If you want to see what we intend for this, check out the booth demos from PAX and NYCC this past year. The Whitevale area has each faction's hub on opposite sides of the "field", but the quest objectives for each are on all on top of each other. So on a PvP server, there's no way you're not getting in a fight.

I don't think you'll find any arguments here. Sometimes you can pretty much guess where contested spots will happen, other times you can design the content to have it intersect with the opposite faction over and over. That's what I would hope for.

One thing I will say... from very early on, CRB has said they log "a crap ton of data" about players, mobs, etc. I imagine they can draw heat maps of player activity in zones. Hopefully all this data they are collecting will help this very cause you speak of.

Carbine already mentioned heat maps on the Frost v Pappy stream. I just wish they'd publish the heat map. It doesnt have to be live but would be interesting to see where we can wPvP prior to logging in. (or while in game).

I was so disappointed with SWTOR Map layout. They had these big Areas and they seem to cut them in Half One side for each faction, Tatooine should have been based around the same Hub like Booty bay, that would have made the game so much better for WPVP, there was also a lot of phasing in SWTOR too. From what I gather in Wildstar there phasing only works for you. Eg It will change for me but not for you and we can still see each other, I really hope this game will have the Wpvp that wow had and better,

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Nothing was more rewarding than the large brawls which would ensue over farming primal fires in Nagrand back in TBC.

Also, it adds complexity to the game economy by giving PvPers an interesting way to make money. Namely, if you need to PvP to get/farm/collect a resource, then PvEers will just buy it off of you at an AH.

In terms of creating a truly epic landscape for the game, I would go even farther than Booty Bay. Referencing Star Wars, I would suggest a 3rd neutral faction of space pirates/gangsters like the Huts and ports/towns like Mos-Espa/Mos-Eisley where duels could take place (which is in line with Wildstar's wild-west theme). Maybe it would even be possible to do dirty work for these guys (quests) to gain rep/loot/access to new zones, or even be a double agent for your faction while working with the pirates (could foresee a long quest chain involving the killing of one of the pirate leaders at the end). Just some thoughts.

I am amazed this thread has almost as many down-votes as it does up. Where is the con in this concept? Because it would encourage pvp? If you don't like open-world pvp then I assume you would roll on a pve server and then it would make no difference to you. As for me, my first toon on WoW was on a pvp server and I absolutely loved leveling through STV, even though I will admit it could be a pain at times. I think throwing the two factions together and seeing what happens is like a mad-scientist's experiment with unexpected - but amusing - results.

Totally agree! On top of that, there should always be an incentive to travel the world including contested zones, even in elder game. If at some point you can reach everything you need via portal hopping, than the chances for fun open world PvP are seriously diminished.

As long as I can play on a server where I can unflag myself and not be forced into PvP, this is fine. Many of us don't find PvP fun at all. But I'm all for setting up the world so that those who enjoy it, can.

This is a question I asked during the Stalker live stream and dev's replied with, "don't worry, we've taken this into account. Zones are made up in such a way you will definitely be able to quench your thirst of open world player blood!"

In a game with mob tagging, I'd be against this because it would make it easy to deny the other faction's ability to level via questing in a non-PVP server while still questing yourself. Contact between factions is good, but facilitating PVE trolling in a rule set where they can't do anything about it is very bad.

In Wildstar, though, I think it's fine. You can only really shut someone down if you can kill them.